[Vibrant Themes and Apps] jblade1000:
buddies now alt

bumping this up because i haven't find what im looking for. I need a Buddies Now alternative. a good one. Im looking more for individual fb updates than i am for a contacts shortcut. I have select friends that i want to track status and updates on, not my entire friends list. Below is what I've used so far with poor results so I need suggestions.

Just for a recap of the strength of Buddies Now, it allows you to put in just the people you want quick access to (not all of your contacts, nor all of your fb friends)

AND

it give you their status from the widget.

1. Contapps - concept is pretty good, facebook contact merging failed miserably, had to manually link the people i cared about getting updates from. The UI itself is terribly kiddie, with penguins and graffiti style wording. Lastly it does have a widget with two size options (4x1 and 4x2) which automatically just picks up the favorites starred in android. unfortunately i cant seem to get it to scroll so in the 4x2 widget it only shows 8 people, regardless of the fact that i have 15 starred contacts. Not cool

2. My Taptu - this is actually an rss reader but it has the ability to read facebook activity (mostly status and wall posts from what i gather). I havent been able to pick who's feeds I want to receive but the app description hinted that i would be able to. No success yet

3. 6sense - this is another rss feed reader that has facebook activity reading capability. the difference is that its supposed to be "smart" and only show you what you care about based on what you read and respond to (basically your own activity). Theres a bar/meter that monitors how much it understands you, and the more you do in it the "smarter" it becomes. So im "long term" testing this one since I think i have respond to the fb friends posts of the ones i want updates on and ignore others. i have no idea if this will work the way i want it to.

4. Phonebook 2.0 - much like contapps, slightly less kiddie interface, had a higher success rate of contact/fb merging. barely. No widget. may have to play with it a bit, unfortunately, it wants to be your main dialer/contacts app so any phone related duties make you pick between it and the default dialer. Since I only want it for one reason (fb updates for specific contacts only) it is mildly annoying.

5. LauncherPro People widget - well this is a people shortcut. scrollable is a plus. no fb updates. so it doesnt do what i need it to...unless im missing something?

So do any of you have anything you could suggest for what im looking for? Thanks in advance

*edit*

6. AddressBook 2.0 with Facebook Mixin - just tried this and its very odd because it uses plugins called "mixins" to provide additional functionality but the main app force closes as soon as it opens. so the main part of this thing, which i have to have installed in order for the mixin to work, doesnt work. however, the facebook mixin logged into fb, got my friends list, did matches against my phone contacts and i got to choose whether i wanted updates from all friends or just favorites, what i wanted to be updated on (pic uploads, shared links, status, etc) and how often. this is a very strong feature set and more towards what i want but it's a shame the main app force closes (and still no widget).